These kinds of windows which create “places” next to them are not simply luxuries ; they are necessary. A room which does not have a place like this seldom allows you to feel fully comfortable or perfectly at ease. Indeed, a room without a window place may keep you in a state of perpetual unresolved conflict and tension - slight, perhaps, but definite.

In principle, any window with a reasonably pleasant view can be a window place, provided that it is taken seriously as a space, a volume, not merely treated as a hole in the wall. 

 - A Pattern Language